In the Foreign Legion Part 28

Every one of these men seemed to look at me with hatred. You sit there in your arm-chair? In an atmosphere of culture? Amongst beautiful things of art? You belong to us! Off to your place, legionnaire, on the wing of the first row of fours in the eleventh company. Quick march, legionnaire, or die! When I spent a golden coin on some amus.e.m.e.nt I seemed to see the hands of the legionnaires, trembling claw-like hands, grasping for my money and trying to rend it from me. Gold! Wealth unheard of after the miserable coppers of the Legion! Give it to us, said those fingers, give it to us! Have you forgotten our five centimes, legionnaire?

My imagination worried me.

I gave a part of the story of my life price, and after much hesitation wrote this book. I have only described the ordinary routine of life in the regiment of foreigners as I myself experienced it. It is merely a tiny part of what every legionnaire undergoes.

I wanted to show the legionnaire--how he lives, and how he must work. I did not dream of being able to warn foolish young fellows about the Legion. It is impossible to warn a fool. But I thought, and think still, that a true and exact description of the French Foreign Legion would perhaps help to put an end to an inst.i.tution which is a disgrace to civilised humanity, and which should be to the civilised nations of to-day as unintelligible as the slave trade.... And above all I wanted to get rid of those visions which troubled me.

In considering the Foreign Legion one must above all be careful not to go to work with common-places, nor to start from general axioms. The idea is so prevalent that the soldiers of the Foreign Legion are lost and ruined men, even criminals--morally and practically useless at best. A good-for-nothing lot of fellows who are no loss to anybody.

One is apt to dispose of the legionnaire in a few trite remarks. Men of learning write from their arm-chairs to the papers about "the hirelings who have sold themselves into slavery, thus helping to revive the feudal system of the Middle Ages." If, however, the question were more closely inquired into, I am sure that it would be found that these rogues and vagabonds are not, in reality, quite so bad. True, I can bring forward no positive proof of this. There are no statistics about the Foreign Legion, and I am in no better position than any other human being to bring forward authentic material. There are not even official figures about the strength of the two regiments. I admit, willingly enough, that a large percentage of the men in the Foreign Legion really deserve the callous summing up that one is wont to apply to the whole regiment. All that I have seen and heard in Africa, however, has convinced me that the other and greater part of the men in the Foreign Legion are anything but the lost souls one imagines them to be. They come into the Legion as poor workmen. Their story is the sad one of the vagabond workman who had to starve on the French high road, because he could not speak the language. It is these men who have always formed the heart of the Foreign Legion. It is the pangs of hunger that drives men into the Foreign Legion--French and English, Germans and Italians, Spaniards and Austrians, men of all countries, men of all races. Yes, hunger is a most efficient recruiting sergeant for the Foreign Legion.

The hungry man who seeks a refuge in the Foreign Legion gets, it is true, his daily bread; he is, all the same, disgracefully swindled. It cannot be repeated often enough how hard the legionnaire has to work, how miserable his existence is, how he gives his whole strength for a wage that is not worth mentioning. We are so practical in our modern ideas of life; every workman knows well enough the exact value of his work in the current coin of the realm, and takes advantage of every opportunity of getting a higher wage. And, in an age which is ever improving the standard of living, and which has so absolutely changed the ideas of the poorer cla.s.ses, how is it possible that a business concern like the Foreign Legion--it is really nothing but a business concern, a commercial undertaking--can always get hundreds and thousands of labourer-soldiers, for a wage compared with which the wages of the tiniest village are riches?

The results are startling when one compares the Foreign Legion with the world's two other mercenary armies, those of America and England, both of which countries, by-the-by, take great care to keep up a certain moral standard among their soldiers. These two armies, in sharp contrast to the Foreign Legion, pay their soldiers exceptionally well.

The least that an American regular receives is thirteen dollars a month; the English Tommy gets a shilling a day. And these are soldiers and not workmen. They are mercenaries, like the legionnaire, but at any rate they are well-paid mercenaries.

The miserable wages, together with the existing conditions of life in the Legion, are enough to convince even a Frenchman that the existence of the Foreign Legion is a sin against the very first principles of humanity--and has been for eighty years. In the sand of Algeria, in the swamps of Madagascar, in the fever-pested plains of Tonquin, in the valleys of Mexico, there lie these men of every nation, these men who have died in the Foreign Legion, who have sold their lives for their rations and five centimes a day.

If one leaves the dead in peace and only considers the living, one reaches the same conclusion: robbery, and robbery of the dest.i.tute at that! A sin against every principle of humanity! Oh, thrice accursed Legion: forcing inexperienced young fellows into its ranks, who would never join did they know what lies before them; absolutely callous as to the value of human life, forcing its soldiers to conditions of life which must ruin their health for ever!

It is not for this alone that the Legion is answerable. It is also answerable for the vices of the Legion, for it is the life in the Legion that has brought the tiny seeds of these vices to full bloom.

About the political aspect of the Foreign Legion there can be no two opinions.

The Foreign Legion is an antiquated, ridiculously out-of-date survival of the feudal system of the Middle Ages, with all the disadvantages of the mercenary system, but without the romantic halo which in days gone by hung around the soldiers of fortune.

According to modern ideas, it is absolutely monstrous that one of the most cultured nations of the world should have in its pay a corps composed of men of all nationalities, and who are, as is generally acknowledged, very often foreign deserters, who enlist to save themselves from starvation. Their colours bear the unsatisfying motto, "Valeur et Discipline." The inscription on the national flag, "Honneur et Patrie"--"For Honour and our Country"--could hardly be given to these "mixed pickles." But these two words, "Valeur" and "Discipline,"

are pregnant with meaning. Comparisons with the English and American armies are not only of interest as far as the pay is concerned; there is in all respects a vast difference between these two armies and the Foreign Legion. Only men of British birth can join the British army.

The American army takes foreigners into its ranks, but only those who possess the so-called first papers, _i.e._, have sworn before a magistrate that they intend to become American citizens after the prescribed five years. The American mercenary is looked upon as an American citizen and has to take the oath of allegiance. The Foreign Legion, on the other hand, knows no oath at all. The printed bit of paper that the recruit for the Foreign Legion signs is merely a contract, a statement of the conditions of service. This contract is the only chain which fetters the legionnaire to the Legion--a contract which, according to every one of our modern ideas of international law, is null and void. To-day, in international law, contracts opposed to public morality are much talked about, and what could be more immoral in every sense of the word than this contract that the French Republic makes with its recruits, this contract in which what is got out of a man and what he is paid stand in such an unsatisfying relation to each other.

As I have said before, there can be no two opinions about the Foreign Legion. Every one with sound ideas of political economy must agree that it is an unheard-of condition of affairs when a nation is allowed to receive the deserters and criminals--I speak now of that other half of the Foreign Legion--of the States surrounding it, indeed from all the States in the world, with open arms, and to make use of them on principle for a special military organisation. One cannot speak too strongly about this transaction, which is a piece of military blackguardism with something more than despicable about it. And not only the feudalism of the Middle Ages survives in the Foreign Legion but also the morals of those times, when a poor devil enlisted because he did not know of anything better to do with his life: of those times when a deserter was valued because he made a pair of arms and legs the less in the opposing force. In the Foreign Legion's enlistment bureaux a recruit gets a special welcome when he announces that he is a deserter, and is then looked upon as a really valuable addition to the corps. It is also a fact that France offers sanctuary to all criminals who fly from justice. The Foreign Legion will only give up murderers--every other kind of criminal is safe there. And France's selfish reason for this is that she can thereby fill the ranks of a regiment that is always fighting for France and which is always ready to do the hardest work for her in the most unhealthy climates. The average Frenchman has, during the Legion's eighty years of existence, contented himself with attributing the successes of the Foreign Legion to the French flag, and has always looked upon the Foreign Legion as a profitable and patriotic inst.i.tution. It is only quite of late that the Foreign Legion has come to be looked upon in France as a problem.

To-day the Foreign Legion is not an inst.i.tution that every Frenchman considers quite in the natural order of things. Even the French Ministry of War has busied itself with the "Legion problem." It could not, however, quite make up its mind to give up the Legion. The possibility of employing a soldier who receives five centimes a day, and who can be made use of for all sorts of dangerous undertakings in the worst of climates, is too great a temptation.

Perhaps the real reason for this tenacity is that France, who is so proud of her military traditions, finds it hard to bring herself to dissolve a corps which has been in existence for more than eighty years and which has been led by many a famous general and marshal of France.

It has been suggested that it would be a good idea to change the method of recruiting. Pa.s.sports should be demanded to make sure that the recruit had not got into trouble with the authorities of his own country. Deserters from the armies of other countries should on no condition be accepted.

There is a diversity of opinion about these suggestions in French military circles. One party a.s.serts that with the deserters the Foreign Legion would lose the flower of its strength, the soldiers who have been trained in other armies. The other side urges that if the pay were raised and the time the men must serve in order to qualify for a pension shortened, the adventurous life in the Foreign Legion and the hope of promotion would always bring more than enough good stuff from all nations for service under the Legion's flag. In these debates the military point of view is the only one of importance and since, considered from this point of view, the Legion has always borne itself splendidly, things have been left as they were. All suggestions for a change in the organisation of the Legion have naturally been made very quietly. All the same the Legion has, of late, come very much before the public in France.

There is no doubt that they are beginning to look at the Foreign Legion a little critically in France. The number of those who doubt that the country is right in keeping up this barbarous inst.i.tution is growing daily. Referring to the great mutiny of the soldiers of the Legion at Saida, Jaures wrote in the _Humanite_:

"The Foreign Legion will doubtless be a source of everlasting difficulty to us; the idea of forming a body of troops for the French army from foreign deserters is at any rate an unusual one."

This is a step in the right direction. They are beginning to talk about the problem of the Foreign Legion. Its existence is no longer considered absolutely natural. The question has been raised. If the Foreign Legion did not exist, and some member of the French parliament were to suggest the formation of a corps of foreign mercenaries, preferably foreign deserters, the suggestion would doubtless be received with indignation. The tactless politician would be sure to be confronted with the somewhat obvious remark that it would be unworthy of the dignity of France to gather a band of foreigners under the tricolour to defend French soil. One would hear some very pretty speeches on the subject. That sort of thing can be tolerated in the Balkan States or in Venezuela or Honduras, but not in our proud France.

Some deputy or other would be certain to warn the nation--the warning is a very obvious one--that other States could inst.i.tute Foreign Legions, filling their ranks with French deserters. Think of the shudder that would pa.s.s through the land at the idea of English ships manned by, or German colonies conquered by, French deserters.

... The Foreign Legion lives upon its past. The Frenchman is accustomed to it and hardly notices what an anachronism it is.

The problem of the Legion is so easy. It can be divided into two questions:

Is it fair to pay a man who works really hard a daily wage of five centimes?

Is it fair to make use of a poor devil's misfortunes, or the fact that he has got into trouble with the authorities of his native land, in this way for national purposes?

The answer to these questions is not difficult.

In later years especially, the French Government has made a clean sweep of many French inst.i.tutions that seemed to be incompatible with the fair fame of France. One can be quite sure that it will in course of time be recognised that the Foreign Legion must be done away with.

One is only tempted to ask: How long will it last?

_Quousque tandem...?_